


The Chase

by Adsecula



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 09:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16870780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adsecula/pseuds/Adsecula
Summary: Young Rae Sloane never becomes an imperial officer.





	The Chase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PermianExtinction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/gifts).



Tonight, Rae Sloane has just about the worst luck on the planet.

It isn’t enough that she was assigned the nastiest patrol route in the history of Ganthel: no, her role has to be the most useless and demoralising thing she could ever imagine.

Still, she does it.

Someone has to take care that all the industrial dumping cans are correctly numbered and sealed in Dockyard District Seventeen. Even though nobody in their right mind would try to steal smelly waste that’s going to be dumped into a free-access trash pit by morning, anyway.

Someone has to walk a full beat around all the loading docks, too, in pouring rain in the dead of night. Then, when the exhausting shift is over, _someone_ has to come into the office and write an in-depth report on anti-imperial propaganda graffiti.

And of course Determined Young Newbie Rae Sloane is _exactly_ the person best suited for these glorious tasks, as her supervisor Commandant Skuuv explained to her, his voice oozing sarcasm with the intensity of a leaky nuclear plant.

He didn’t call her by her name during his tirade, though. Stormtroopers don’t get to respond to personal identities when on-duty. Rae has a unique serial number, now, which makes her feel like she’s a... delivery of standard issue toothpaste, maybe, or a crate of size 5 screw bolts. Something utterly sterile and replaceable.

ND-0207, that’s her new name as far as the Empire is concerned. Rae swallows the lump of disappointment lodged in her throat.

_It’s fine. It’s not forever. I just have to get used to it._

With a kind of self-contained fury, Rae quickly types in the data for Dockyard 17-O-AA/X. Her fingers are numb with cold, even under her thin black gloves. The rain patters against her slick white armour, hurrying towards the oily ground in streaming rivulets.

All twenty cans are safe and sound.

 _Oh, thank the Force. The Empire can rest easy tonight_ , she thinks ruefully.

This is all happening because she misspoke to Agent Hacek yesterday, she knows.

A common stormtrooper is not supposed to correct a visiting imperial agent on internal procedures and analysis specifications, even if the agent is a lazy son-of-a-bitch and she only meant to be helpful to him in the first place. High-ranking imperial agents apparently don’t see that kind of behaviour as earnestness. They see it as a threat to their authority.

Rae sighs and adjusts her ugly white helmet. She’s still learning. Always learning.

***

Just as she is about to continue on to Half Moon Plaza, something scrapes behind her with a rough metallic noise. A round object rolls across the street and falls into the water with a loud splash.

Rae whirls around, her eyes wide and her blaster already raised to stun. Her reflexes are fast, but she feels dismay at how loudly her heart thunders away inside her chest cavity.

She scans the street warily. Nothing.

She paces near to the edge of the docking bay and huddles beneath the scant shelter offered by a parked imperial transport carrier. She peeks around and finds only a plasteel trash can cover, already filthy with muck, floating on top of a slick layer of oil. The wind shakes the cans loose sometimes, she knows, especially in this kind of fierce weather. It is nothing to worry about. She feels her taught muscles begin to relax a little.

Then the shame begins to burn away inside her.

This is just another example of the same worthless fear that cost her everything she’d worked so hard to obtain. She does not want that fear to begin disrupting her daily work, too. She _needs_ this job.

Rae hefts the trash cover up and goes to find exactly where to reseal it. She’ll be damned if Skuuv gets to blame her for inefficiency, if any loose can’s contents should spill out to contaminate the docking bay and halt transportation.

Rae tries not to feel resentment, even though she knows that Skuuv only likes to target her because he thinks she’s a bit too ambitious for a trooper. Commandant Skuuv is happy with his lot, but paranoid. He does not like to imagine anyone else grabbing his comfortable position away from him.

As if Rae would ever stoop so low in her desires for her future.

She would never have flunked officer training anyway, if she hadn’t unexpectedly ended up in a final exam recreation of an abduction scenario. For a teenager who had vicariously repressed her vivid memories of the time she had nearly been taken away by Kotaska slavers, such an unannounced change in the teamwork assignment did not go too well. She’d frozen up – literally. She had just stood in place, with no orders issuing from her mouth, not even a cry of warning - and that had cost her an advantage.

Sure, she had recovered enough to ace all her written exams and theoretical studies, but that wasn’t enough for her to graduate as an officer of the Imperial Navy. Assuming a rank of command was simply not a path in life Rae would get to tread.

At least, not the easy way.

A quick shadow flits to the side of her vision. Rae turns her walk into a brisk trot.

She raises the can lid in front of herself like a shield and narrows her eyes.

No, if she ever wants to become a _real_ officer, the kind who gets to lead on Star Destroyers, she’ll have to rise from the lowest rank by her sweat and tears alone. It is possible. She knows a captain of an attack cruiser who had only ever completed basic stormtrooper training in her Academy days.

Rae could have finished her training at the Academy as an analytical aide. She could have been working in a warm office right now, far away from an industrial planet like Ganthel. She even could have been accepted as a Loyalty Officer, the kind who spend their days culling seditious acts within the Navy.

But none of that is anything close to what Rae _really_ wants. She always yearned to be a part of the real, active efforts the Empire is organising to stomp out scum and villainy.

Not that she’s doing much to stop Kotaska gang members by counting glorified trash cans, but she’ll take things one night at a time.

Rae rounds the corner and stomps forward with an aggressive confidence she doesn’t really feel.

***

She pauses.

There’s a skinny creature down by an open can: a shabbily-dressed human man carefully fishing out old ship parts and half-rotten food. He looks a little younger than her and down in his luck.

‘Good evening’, Rae growls. Her vocabulator is about the only good thing about her cheap armour: all stormtroopers get the same voiceover, a gravelly male tone that brooks no argument.

She hopes that’ll be warning enough for the miscreant to leave. She never feels good about arresting the homeless of Ganthel. She once used to be dirt poor, too.

The young man looks up at her. His eyes are black and they twinkle merrily enough, yet Rae finds something unlikeable about his attitude. It’s like he’s scanning her and finding weak spots to exploit.

‘Good evening, officer’, he replies, breaking into a slow and easy smile. ‘How may I be of service?’

‘Your documents for inspection’, Rae snaps. ‘Unless you have a permit to handle dock refuse, I doubt you have any good reason for lingering outside in weather like this.’

‘Oh dear’, he responds, not looking the least concerned. ‘Would you believe me? I quite forgot myself and left them all at home.’

His accent is jarringly weird: an upper-class Core World drawl, but with a twinge of something else. It’s as if he’s trying hard to mask bumpkin origins, but never got to complete his vocal training. Rae knows a lot of people try to fix their manner of talking when they go up in society, but this one hardly looks like a poster boy of personal success.

‘I am in no hurry, citizen. I am happy to escort you to the nearest station, where a simple biosample check will bring up your personal data’, Rae says. She would not relish walking all the way back to her unit’s base, of course, but right now she wants to expose the cocky young man’s lie for what it is.

‘Ah. I suppose I must confess: I did not have time to get my documents yet’, the man sighs dramatically. He drops the drawl and immediately assumes the look of a sheepish ground-level dweller. ‘I’m quite new to Ganthel. It’s all been so very confusing to me, your Core World bureaucracy and all. Desert home planet, you understand.’

‘Which planet?’ Rae asks him doggedly, not lowering her blaster a single inch. ‘You should have an ID pass issued previous to your arrival, at the very least.’

‘Outer Rim. Not much use for ID cards out there’, he says glumly. ‘I was going to have one issued, but…’

‘Sure you were. I could forgo your fine for malicious loitering in favour of an arrest, you know.’

It’s not even a bad idea. A fine will serve her twofold: wipe away the smile on his face and go on her record as a successful intervention. A real arrest would do double the good...

‘Oh no! Haha, please, hah, there’s no need for that’, he tut-tuts at her reassuringly. ‘You can just type in a fine for an anonymous recipient manually, can’t you?’

Rae snorts. ‘Yeah, no. I got better things to be doing.’

‘Like counting trash cans?’

She drops the can cover she had been holding, embarrassed, and prods him in the ribs with her blaster.

‘Shut up.’

‘Sorry, sorry’, he mumbles, not looking sorry in the least.

‘You’re going to return that garbage and reseal that can’, Rae orders. ‘After that, you’re coming with me.’

‘Fine’, he grumbles.

He drops the items he was attempting to pilfer back into the can and neatly steps to the side. In a low crouch, he picks up his own things – a cheap vibroblade, a small box of E-11 blaster rifle parts, and a torn packet of rations – quickly stuffing them all into a worn bag of belongings. He’s still grinning broadly. The rain has plastered his black hair to his pale face; he looks like a drowning yet hopeful loth-rat.

‘While we’re still young, please’, Rae says. She can barely see, with the water soaking up her visor. She takes the damnable helmet off and wipes it down on the dark fabric on her midriff, careful not to drop her guard nor ease the grip on her weapon.

‘Oh’, the miscreant tells her, his eyes full of appraisal.

‘Now what?’

‘Your hair is gorgeous. You look like you could play the Viscountess in _The Conquest of Mandalore_ ’, he says a little breathlessly. He pauses. ‘That’s an opera, you know. It’s really famous. It has real _music_ in it. Very intense. She’s a mighty warrior protecting her people and she fought her own family clan for the throne.’

‘Yeah, that’s me, the mighty warrior’, Rae snaps, feeling her cheeks burn. ‘Now hurry the kriff up or I’ll shoot you.’

Thankfully, the vagrant has no further funny business in mind: he’s picked up the lid and is already resealing it, with an exaggerated air of respectful diffidence.

Rae rolls her eyes.

‘What’s your name?’ He asks her abruptly, peeking out at her from over his shoulder.

‘Rae’, she replies automatically. She shakes her head. ‘I mean, ND-0207.’

‘Rae. Cool. That’s cool. Incidentally, my name’s Gallius Rax’, he says, proudly. He reaches out his hand, a skinny, bony thing with a weird little tattoo on the palm. She stares at him as if he is offering her to shake a dead fish. He lowers the hand slowly back, looking a little downcast.

‘I do apologise for all this inconvenience, officer Rae.’

‘I’m not an officer’, Rae corrects him reluctantly. ‘But I could introduce you to one at the detention centre, real soon, if you don’t clear yourself off the streets _right this instant_.’

‘Certainly, Rae, certainly’, Rax soothes her with a placating gesture of his bony hands. ‘I’ll just pick up my things and be right away after I pay your fine.’

‘No fine needed. Just get out of my sight’, Rae waves him off with a huff of annoyance. She isn’t even feeling particularly magnanimous, but he threw her off a bit with his weird little speech. Best he just disappears before he embarrasses her any further.

As he scurries away, she stiffens in sudden recognition: he had E-11 blaster rifle parts. Those blasters were only ever issued by BlasTech Industries as standard issue gear for stormtroopers. Which means… He can’t have legally acquired those.

‘Hey, you!’ Rae shouts. ‘Those are imperial property!’

‘Bye, Rae!’ The intruder squeaks, jumping off the quay with a parting wave, and flitting off into the shadows.

‘Fuck’, Rae groans. She quickens into a full run.

‘Stop right there!’

Their chase is terribly messy: she can hear him slipping against the wet concrete and gravel, as if he is unused to the slickness created by the downpour. Frustratingly, she’s also unable to run to her best ability. Stormtrooper armour is pretty inflexible.

She has the advantage, though: he’s an off-worlder in _her_ city.

Rae grins, panting.

He’s gone down a dead end street. Fool. She can catch him yet.

She sets her blaster to a low fire: enough to stop him, but not enough to drop him dead. She wants to find out his weapon supplier’s address. Cracking down a smuggling ring would really, really do her lowly career a world of good.

_Huh?_

Rae skids to a halt. The street is empty.

No, not quite. He’s pretty clever, Mister Rodent-Face, young Gallius Rax. He has found himself a way out – or rather, a way _down_.

She looks down the drain. At the bottom, a viscous black sludge glistens and something filthy skitters away into the pipelines.

Rae wrinkles her nose in disgust.

Oh yeah. She has absolutely the worst luck.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully will have a continuation chapter or two. Until then, hope you enjoyed this!


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